The pairing of
the Cello Concerto with Sea Pictures begs comparison with
one of the most famous Elgar records ever made, in which two
of Britain’s most promising young musicians, Jacqueline Du
Pré and Janet Baker, joined forces with elder statesman Sir
John Barbirolli. The rest, as they say, is history.

In spite of the
myth surrounding these readings – in the case of Du Pré, as
with Kathleen Ferrier, it is often difficult to listen to
the recording objectively shorn of its tragic trappings –
there are Elgarians who feel they established standards of
indulgence which have been followed all too often in the ensuing
years. This latest fits the pattern all too well. I give comparative
timings of the concerto, plus those of another which, in spite
of the French cellist, can be considered a “traditional” interpretation.

I

II

III

IV

TT

Li-Wei/Braithwaite

08:22

04:41

05:05

11:43

29:52

Du Pré/Barbirolli

07:58

04:28

05:15

12:15

29:56

Tortelier/Boult

07:17

04:20

04:39

10:40

26:56

The Casals/Boult
has been transferred by Living Era as a single track so I
do not have movement timings; overall it takes 27:05.

Timings don’t
tell us everything and Li-Wei and Braithwaite actually manage
more forward movement in the first movement than Casals with
their less wayward phrasing, but it does sound doleful and
I hear no especial distinction of phrasing or expression that
might justify it. The third movement shows more personal commitment
to the music, but this is expressed in several agogic exaggerations
that would surely become very irritating on repetition.

The fast tempi
in this performance are actually briskish-to-normal – the
long timing of the second movement is due the way the music
is pulled around in the opening bars and whenever the opportunity
appears later on. Similarly, if the finale is actually shorter
than Du Pré/Barbirolli it is because the main theme is almost
too fast, the introspective music then very slow, with the
result that the music loses any sense of shape.

Sea Pictures,
too, hark back to the famed model:

I

II

III

IV

V

TT

Campbell/Braithwaite

05:40

01:48

06:27

03:51

06:07

23:53

Baker/Barbirolli

04:59

02:03

06:16

04:08

06:04

23:30

While it is possible
to find Dame Janet’s timbre too dark and the overall effect
laboured and lugubrious, it is also undeniable that she was
a great singer. Things like her enunciation of “I, the Mother
mild, Hush thee, O my child”, capped by her ascent to “Forget
the voices wild”, or her outburst at “The new sight, the new
wondrous sight” are of the once-heard-never-forgotten variety.
The secret seems to lie in an individual response to words
and the way they inflect the vocal colouring. It is idle to
pretend that Elizabeth Campbell’s singing, in itself finely
controlled and refulgent of tone but never going beyond a
straightforwardly musical response, can efface memories of
Baker, and she has unfortunately missed the opportunity to
use her brighter tone to offer a genuine alternative, with
more flowing tempi (how about trying those indicated in the
score?). The first song is a lethargic, lugubrious affair
indeed, a plodding eight-in-a-bar. Did she and Braithwaite
not realize that something must be wrong when, towards the
end of the third song, Elgar broadens his Moderato (fourth-note
= 72) to Grandioso (fourth-note = 66), and they are already
going so slowly they actually have to speed up, completely
misrepresenting Elgar’s clear intentions? As it happens, this
increase in speed means that for once they adopt a plausible
tempo and from there the song surges powerfully to the end,
but this fragment of the genuine Elgarian article only emphasizes
what is missing elsewhere. Both the last two songs suffer
from the same problem as the finale of the concerto; basic
tempi which are almost on the fast side alternating with drastic
slowings every time a ritardando is marked, or even when it
is not. Just to give one example of many, the purely orchestral
bar after “From the heights and hollows of fern and feather”
is marked “poco rall.”, but Campbell and Braithwaite have
allowed Elgar’s “molto espress.” to tempt them into a BIG
rallentando four bars earlier, so now Braithwaite has to make
a bigger one still. Then, two bars later, the word “surely”
has tenuto markings over its two notes and is marked “rit.”.
Logically, in order to do that, you’d have to go back to your
original tempo in the intervening bar, otherwise the whole
thing just comes to a standstill.

That much of this
may stem from Braithwaite himself is suggested by the “Kingdom”
Prelude, where he pitches in as if he’s conducting Strauss’s
“Don Juan” and then becomes sticky wherever the temptation
comes up (pretty often). Braithwaite is something of a folk-hero
with lovers of British music as a result of all those Lyrita
records of music we wouldn’t have heard otherwise (and still
wouldn’t to this day in many cases), but Elgar doesn’t seem
to be his composer.

An irrelevant
disc in the history of Elgar on record, obviously; if you
like self-indulgent Elgar you will want to get it at source
from Du Pré, Baker and Barbirolli. If you want to go back
to Elgarian basics a good first stop might be the Anthony
Pini/Van Beinum cello concerto (there is a review on the site
from 1999 of a Beulah transfer of this early Decca recording;
is it still available?).

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